Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

It does say patent pending which means application process. I searched the apps, and didn't find it yet, but sometimes those take a year or so to before they can be found in the public domain.

The typical timing I am used to is 2-6 years. 2 for a big company wiht a lot of resources on a realtively uncontested application. Who know how long if there are some hot button claims. My last one required the clamis be re-submittted several times. Each resubmition seems to add on 6-months to a year.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

they developed their drive system sometime this last summer however (according to my Thunderchicken team member resources) and one of the people on the patent list is a former Thunderchicken. He is now one of our mentors for Crevolution #2851 and the last time he was on TC was 2003. Unless he did it in secret, he did not help with this drive train and therefor it has to be something else.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

I recall a previous thread where a team was looking to patent something related to their robot (some wheel, I think) and the general consensus was that it wasn't worth it.

If the method was the nonadrive I think the patent is invalid anyway. They can grant you a patent for something but for many methods they grant patents and find out later on that it was invalid to begin with. Which if it is the nonadrive I believe it is the case.

For a patent to be valid must be new, non-obvious, and useful or industrially applicable. Useful? I think so. Industrially applicable? Again I'd say yes. Non-obvious? Maybe. New? I don't think so. I have seen this method multiple times over the years in CAD. It must have been new or obvious to who ever thought up the SpamThingAcon years ago (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...spamthingacon). 343's omni-drive is another drive system to look at when considering new/non-obvious. The new and non-obvious I am not sure I buy.

Maybe an exercise in the patent process, which is great. Maybe it's a neat way to display a patent firm's sponsorship. I wouldn't be especially worried about using the design in the FIRST arena. I probably wouldn't go selling these types of systems, not for fear of violating a patent, but financially you could be locked up for years in court even if you are right and the patent is indeed invalid.

Your team was probably correct, unless it was a new, non-obvious wheel I'd think the patent wasn't worth it.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

This is the first year we were allowed 5 total cims (right?).
Either they planned for 2 cims each side, then a fp or 2 on the 9th wheel.
Or 1 cim per side, with the third on the 9th wheel, and a free cim.
Or any combination.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Or maybe they didn't design it over the summer, which is what I think Chris was asking you about.

As soon as you submit a patent application to the PTO, you can say, "Patent Pending" if they don't just throw it out right away. So, if they designed it during build and submitted a patent application at some point during build, there should have been plenty of time for the PTO to say "We don't see anything that would cause immediate rejection, here's your number, please be patient as we examine it closely". Then all you need to do is apply the sticker.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Design patents are interesting in the fact that the design is not allowed to provide any utility. If it does, the PTO will reject it.
As far as why any FRC team would want to patent something is beyond me. Unless its something that can be mass produced and sold (AM 6" mecanum wheel hubs), or licensed to a company for use, there really isn't much use in a patent.

Re: pic: ThunderChickens Patent

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cory

Did 217 patent the CCT?

That wouldn't take 8 years though, would it?

The CCT patent was filed following the 2002 season and abandoned in 2007 because it's just too expensive and there wasn't really anything to be gained. The students on the design team that year benefited tremendously just by having the patent pending when they applied to college, and I only just recently found out that we never completed the process.

I have the design documents if anyone is interested in seeing what it entailed. There is likely also an older thread in the archives discussing it.

Interestingly, the Illinois Tech Robotics team (ITR, www.iit.edu/~robotics) been using the CCT robot, Colonel, to promote FIRST in urban Chicago since 2005. More recently, the team refurbished and entered Colonel into a collegiate robotics competition this past March and made it to the semi-finals!